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Monthly Archives: April 2013

My thoughts on first hearing about the Boston Marathon Bombing besides the shock of the tragedy, wasn’t on the particular motives or identifying which group the actual culprits were; my worry was on catching the culprits. Given how long the investigation went before there were any suspects, I was worried that the terrorists had gotten away clean. But for millions of others in the country, there was quite another worry.

For David Sirota, writing at Salon, the hope was that the Boston Bomber was a White American. The worry was that the bombers would be anyone else. Sirota’s argument was an extremely distorted version of White Privilege. But the fact that the identity of the a- that-time still unidentified culprits was of vital importance to the left is as good an explanation for the divide that exists in this country as any. On that basis, I highly recommend Sirota’s column. If you want to know why conservatives are from Mars and liberals are from Venus, it’s all there.

So Sirota and millions of liberals can take some solace that yes, the Bombers were White, and in the case of at least one of the bombers, an American citizen. Naturalized on 9/11; how about that. But this isn’t the kind of white American that the readers of Salon, or liberals in general, were hoping for. They wanted the bombers to be right wing Tea Party types. Actually, more than hope; many of them were expecting it.

I discovered that this week online, via Twitter and on Political Message boards. I spend a fair amount of time on political forums. I like to see and hear other arguments and hone my own. But I also like to be aware of the political worldview of my political opponents. It’s hard to keep in touch with that unless you constantly immerse yourself in their ideas and arguments, which I do. But I admit even I was surprised by the reaction of some the left leaning members of the web forums I hang out at.

Before the victims had even all been taken to the hospital, posts denouncing the bombers as right wing conservatives filled the internet. One even made the point that April was filled with right wing violence, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord. If the left wants to include Lexington and Concord as an example of right wing militia violence, I find myself fairly comfortable with that. But that merely shows how the left is becoming less and less moored to our country and history. If the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking of the founding fathers is white male slaveholder, you might be a liberal.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.

But the leftist mindset of hoping for the right kind of terrorist doesn’t seem to have an equivalent on the right. I don’t recall any sort of twitter messages or forum posts of righties hoping that the bombers were Occupy Wall Street types. Of course, Occupy Wall Street types have committed terrorist acts, but I think most on the right just don’t consider them motivated enough to be the type of terrorists that radical Muslims are…oops! Did I just use the “M” word?

That’s a big no no! Here, conservatives can plead guilty. There were many posts along the lines of, “I guess Muslim terrorists did it.” Not hoping for it, but it just seemed likely. And that was in fact what the Boston Marathon bombing was, a terrorist attack committed by radicalized Muslims. But that is the sort of clear eyed reality the left avoids. For them, it’s as if every new terrorist attack, it’s as another chance to blame Sarah Palin. The Gabby Giffords shooting set the ugly template for the left blaming the right with zero evidence.

But trying to argue with the left on this point seems to be fruitless. It didn’t matter on the web forums this week. It didn’t matter that Sarah Palin was not the shooter at the Tucson shooting, when I found myself criticized by a famous science fiction author for expressing skepticism that the Tea Party had anything to apologize for when Gabby Giffords was shot, and I might as well have been Sisyphus pushing the boulder of reason up the hill of the Ft. Hood massacre trying to explain that Major Hasan was in fact a terrorist, not someone who cracked under the constant discrimination of being a Muslim American. In fact, for an excellent example of how unmoored from reality the left can be, check out this thread where I make the simple point that Hasan was a Muslim terrorist.

In other terrorism news, the left gets a lift. The ricin letter writer Paul Kevin Curtis, turns out to be both White, Male, and Christian! It’s the leftie terrorism wish list come true! And yes, it does get even better, he’s a Southerner! This is the most perfect news imaginable except…

The Associated Press will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant,” its executive editor said Tuesday, a decision that comes as negotiations over a deal on comprehensive immigration reform are continuing.

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person,” she wrote. “Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

Carroll acknowledges that the new guidance will “perhaps just a bit at first” make writers’ jobs more difficult. “But while labels may be more facile, they are not accurate,” she writes.

Under the heading “illegal immigration,” the AP’s Stylebook will list acceptable variations including “living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.”

The article doesn’t say what they will replace it with; probably undocumented immigrant or some variation. But I’ve noticed the gradual push on news shows when illegal immigration is the topic, invariably the pro illegal representative will either not use that term or will state he doesn’t accept the legitimacy of that term. You know, along the vein of “no human being is illegal.” The goal of course, is to make the term un-PC so as to delegitimize the political opposition by delegitimizing the term.

Really, I’m surprised this didn’t happen during the 2007 immigration battles. But now that the AP has made this move, I expect the New York Times, Gannett, and basically everyone else in the main stream media to follow suit. Eventually, even ICE will have to scrub its website of the soon-to-be racist epitaph

In a way, they have a point. The term illegal immigrant isn’t really descriptive of who these people are. They are not immigrants since they don’t even have a right to be in the country, let alone settle down here. So I’ll do my part and refer to these border crossers and visa over-stayers as illegal aliens.